In case you missed it, I was a guest on the Editor’s Roundtable on KPBS this morning with Bob Kittle, the editor of the editorial page of The San Diego Union-Tribune and also the author of many of that publication’s unsigned editorials.
I – loyal Sloppers know – have decided that there’s a lot of work in the field of pointing out errors, contradictions and plain untruths in those editorials.
Kittle decided, on the show, to continue arguing that the new commercial airport imagined at Miramar could work alongside a robust and fully functioning base of jet fighters.
He’s the only one in San Diego doing this. As I keep saying, even the most ardent supporters of a new airport at Miramar don’t argue that the Marines could keep flying tactical jets in the same area.
Witness John Chalker. I just got off the phone with him. He’s the head of a group called ASAP 21, which is lobbying in support of the Miramar option. Although ASAP 21 won’t be running the campaign or spending money on it, it will be working hard over the summer to get the Airport Authority’s ballot measure passed.
Chalker believes that the new airport is vital to San Diego’s future. But unlike Kittle, he’s not pretending that the Marines could keep doing what they do at Miramar alongside a new airport.
He and others believe that the Marines will, or could, stop flying tactical jets at Miramar and that the Marines should talk about that and it’s important for San Diego to plan for what kind of opportunities that will provide. He has unclassified military documents that seem to show – I don’t quite understand the acronyms, but you can check them out here – the Marines pondering a realignment of their tactical jets to somewhere like Yuma, Ariz.
“I believe that eventually the Marines will decide to leave Miramar. It’s as inevitable as the British deciding to leave India after Gandhi began leading the independence movement,” Chalker said.
There you go. Along with Joe Craver’s statements, it appears that Kittle may be the only one in town who still thinks we’re talking about “joint-use” of Miramar – as in the military flying planes alongside the commercial airliners.